"Oo-h! Stop throwing dish water in my face, Nolla!" cried Polly, with
eyes screwed shut and one free hand trying to rub the smarting lye from
her eye.
"I never did, Polly! It must have splashed accidentally when I was
washing the pan."
"You have done nothing since you began the dishes, but rattle and swash
that mop about in the pan as if you were mining the ore from the cave,"
complained Polly, as she managed to open her eyes again.
"I suppose it is because we are so excited over the find, and all it
means for you, Polly," explained Eleanor, contritely.
"It doesn't mean much more, now, than before. The thing I am most happy
over, is that Old Man Montresor will be vindicated, and people will
stop jeering at me, and at what they called his locoed ideas."
The conversation was interrupted at this moment by the appearance of
Sary. She first poked her head from the partly opened door of her room
and then said: "Is any one about to see me?"
Polly turned to make sure that they were alone in the kitchen, and
Eleanor replied: "No, what is it, Sary?"
Then the maid stepped forth and such a vision! She had curled her red
hair on a pair of old-fashioned tongs. The curling irons were but a
quarter of an inch in diameter and they were heated by thrusting them
into the living embers of the kitchen fire. When Sary drew the comb
through her scanty tresses they took on the appearance of carrot-
colored cotton threads which had just been ripped out of an old
garment--so crinkly and frizzed were the strands of hair.
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